


party up

by elliptical



Series: helmsman sollux shenanigans [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, BDSM, Black Romance, Black-Pale Vacillation, Dom/sub, Explicit Sexual Content, Helmsman Kink, Helmsman Sollux Captor, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Overstimulation, Quadrant Confusion, Quadrant Vacillation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 06:17:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8239067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: At the end of a long helm shift, Sollux Captor has a physical therapy session with his kismesis.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muchlessvermillion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchlessvermillion/gifts).



> we're back with more helmsman sollux. and porn. this is porn
> 
>  
> 
> _i dream about it in my sleep_  
>  _you seem to like me better when i creep_  
>  _this time i won't lose_  
>  _i didn't see this coming_  
>  _why don't you start me up_  
>  _there's no more messing around_  
>  _come on and light me up_  
>  _-party up, hilary duff_

CT: D→ Engaging system shutdown  
CT: D→ Beginning helmsman extraction

The neural connections power down one by one, severed from your conscious grasp even as the systems continue to hum. Slow extraction is less disorienting than a fast one - the infinite plane your pan occupies slowly shrinks down, the edges folding in, until you zoom into the pinprick that is your wetware body.

Once you’re stuck in it entirely, folding awareness back into your limbs and skull and thorax, you groan. The body aches near-constantly because it’s impossible to siphon out psionic power without some pain, and painkiller regimens need to taper off before extraction so that you can actually think. You open your eyes, which are all but useless compared to the crystalline images captured by security cameras, and squint around the helmsblock.

“Your name,” Equius Zahhak says.

“Big Throbbing Bulges,” you reply.

His lips press together. “That is not amusing. My name.”

“Party fun times killer.”

“This is a serious test.”

You groan again. “Sollux Captor, Equius Zahhak, the square root of twelve is a hundred forty-four - no, twelve squared is a hundred forty-four, that was a slip of the tongue, not pan damage - we’re on the Flagship Brighton, I’m eleven sweeps old, and if you don’t unhook me I’m gonna piss in your coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” Equius says imperiously, but he unlocks the struts keeping the wetware suspended and eases you onto the helmsblock floor.

“Whatever freaky energy drink you guzzle, then, I don’t care that much.” You stretch your arms in front of you and peer at your hands, because it’s the next part of the drill and because you’ll never get over how fucking weird hands are. Ten fingers make for fast typing, but your body is basically meat with protruding sticks with paws with more protruding sticks. Ships are way sleeker.

“Stand up.”

You usually can’t stand unassisted immediately after release, but that’s part of the test. Gotta demonstrate the higher pan function to recognize a problem and solve it. You curl your spindly, weird-ass fingers around the handhold built into the wall for this purpose, and hoist yourself up.

“Your muscle tone is better than it was last time,” Equius observes. “The machine adjustments are working.”

“Rad,” you say. “I’m gonna go find Karkat.”

“Not yet.” He points to the adjacent medblock, haughty and imperious as always. “Go sit.”

“Oh my fucking god. Can we not just skip the protocol just this once?”

“No. I need the data.”

Equius is a hardass, and you can argue your way out of his orders, but you can’t argue your way out of protocol. Sneaky bastard, picking a profession where he gets to boss you around. (Not that sneaky. He doesn’t even perspire around you anymore, the rude fuck. Somewhere along the way his career lost the allure of hemosuperiority, if it ever had that in the first place.)

You huff and go sit in the medbay. The mediculler who checks your eyesight and reflexes is not Equius, but Equius stands in the corner of the room holding a clipboard and pen, scrawling as delicately as a baby woolbeast. They have to balance this odd space you occupy between troll and machine. You’ve been at this long enough not to get worked up over strange hands on you, so you just make longsuffering expressions at your auspistice while the medic examines your spinal ports and wrists and horns, checking for damage or infection.

“Alright, I gotta go find Karkat,” you say once you’re pronounced healthy.

“You’re meant to do a physical therapy session to recalibrate your muscles.”

“I’m gonna do a physical therapy session. With Karkat.”

Equius makes a noise that’s almost mournful. It’s the sort of sound you’d expect from a man chained to an ocean outcropping, watching the tide come in and unable to do anything about it.

He politely waits until the mediculler leaves the room, apparently unable to bear subjecting a poor stranger to the depravity. Then he bites the bullet and says, “Sex is not a substitute for physical therapy.”

“It is the way we do it.”

The sound he makes now is more like a moobeast getting run down by a scuttlebug.

Honestly testing his fucking patience is fun, since there’s always a chance he’ll flip black enough for a depraved threesome. The one time you suggested it, he turned the color of a ripe plum, broke a crowbar in half, and didn’t speak to you for four nights, but hey. Hope springs eternal.

Now he just rubs his forehead, because you are a migraine in machine/troll form. “Your muscles are stiff. You need to get used to the way your body handles stress before you stress it with… rigorous activity.”

“Okay, so how about a compromise.” You say it reasonably enough that he tilts his head, allowing you to go on. “Karkat shoves his bulge in me in every planned physical therapy position.”

The clipboard cracks. Nice.

“We’ve known each other a long time, Captor.” He folds his burly arms over his chest. You have to stop yourself from thinking about his muscles, because you have not gotten laid in a while, and wanting to jump the first troll you see is an unfortunate side effect of long helm shifts. “I know that I could literally strap you down and you’d still find a way to pail Vantas.”

“That. Is an interesting idea.”

“No! That is not the point!”

“I am very interested in this idea.”

You have never seen Equius struggle so hard not to use profanity.

“You’re in… good spirits, at least,” he finally says, his voice grating like a rusty saw over wood. “You can go see him under certain circumstances.”

“Wait, are you actually gonna specify what positions we have to use?”

His head rocks back against the wall, denting it. You think he might be praying. “Your body can’t handle more than one orgasm.”

“Excuse the fuck out of you.”

“No physical wounds, no staying upright for long periods of time, no stress positions, no heavy bondage, and not more than one session,” he says, ticking the specs off on his fingers.

You stare. “That’s gonna be the most boring sex of all time.”

“Yes, well, I do understand the merit of risking cardiac arrest for the sake of your depraved exploits, but unfortunately I answer to the Heiress.”

“Are you being a wet blanket as my helmstech or my auspistice?”

“Both. As your helmstech, I hope you’ll respect the necessity of safety precautions. As your auspistice, I understand you’ll ignore me, so I’m sending Vantas a memo of your med specs.”

“You are the worst kind of person.”

He waves you out of the room.

\---

Obviously the solution is to find Karkat before he can read Equius’ message. Maybe you’ll get lucky and you can interrupt a nap, because there’s pretty much no other way he won’t be glued to his palmhusk. Given the tone of the messages he’s been sending lately, you doubt he’s going to sleep through your extraction - probably has the fucking date marked on the calendar with little spades - but a guy can dream.

Karkat opens his block door and hauls you inside before you can even knock. Alright. A guy can’t dream.

“Hey,” you say. “Heyheyhey. I wanna pail. Let’s pail.”

He’s wearing his military uniform for no other reason than that you find it really fucking hot. You know the fabric is too heavy and the jacket’s collar makes his neck itch and the pants frame his ass so nicely because they’re too tight. If tonight weren’t the night you haul ass out of the helmsblock, he’d be curled up in a pair of sweatpants rewatching some hideous romcom from his youth for “nostalgia’s sake.” Yeah, right.

Fuck, you’re getting distracted. He’s done nothing with his hair, although you _think_ he might have patted concealer over his dark circles for reasons you can only guess at. All this effort and you haven’t bothered to change out of your grease-spattered flightsuit. Your breath still smells like the burger you snagged and crammed in your mouth on the way over here.

Whatever. Your lack of effort can be another reason to hate you.

Karkat doesn’t look furious or hurt, which is a pretty good way to start the night. There’s a wicked gleam in his eye as he closes the door and says, “No foreplay?”

“Every dirty message you’ve sent me while I’m trying to work is your foreplay, you puckered sphincter. There have been two thousand eighty-seven total this shift. I counted.”

“If only your body was free to be fucked senseless more often,” he says, and it’s still light, still teasing, but it treads close enough to dangerous territory that you surge forward and bite his shoulder.

He responds instantly, shoving a knee between your legs and pressing you back against the wall. You rut against him with a grateful moan, sucking on the bite mark you left. It’s not quite bleeding - he’s got a thing about visible wounds, still, after all this time - but it is going to bruise. You drag your fingers over the jacket.

“Take your fucking clothes off.”

Karkat laughs, pressing his knee harder into your groin. “Patience, young apprentice.”

“I swear to fuck if you quote movies at me again I will _tear your jacket in two._ ”

“No you won’t. You like it too much.”

“Don’t spam me with fantasies if you’re not gonna deliver,” you say, abandoning the jacket to rake your hands through his hair instead, claws catching none-too-gently on his scalp. “The machines _know_ when I’m horny. It ends up in Equius’ _charts_.”

“And then he messages me telling me to stop stressing your pusher.”

“You…” You’re so pitch for him it’s going to kill you, hungry fire licking your ribs. “You’re manipulating our auspistice into giving you the upper hand.”

“Nah. He knows what he’s doing. He’s just sabotaging your ‘I’m an unfeeling piece of equipment’ efforts because he finds them as asinine as I do.”

“ _Take your clothes off._ ”

“Sloooow down.” He lowers his knee, and you slide boneless down the wall, slumping against him. Your legs wobble when you put your weight back on them. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“I am in perfectly fit condition to pail.”

“Just not against the wall.” He slips his hand through your curls, thumb catching on the base of one of your horns. “Hey. Hey, look at me. You good?”

“I’m great.”

“You’ve only been out of shipspace for an hour. Are you disoriented?”

“I swear to _fuck_.”

“If we have sex, it’s gonna be because you want it as you, not because you’re moving on instinct.”

“You’re really doing this. You’re really making us talk feelings before the lay rather than after.” You groan and steady your balance, trying to ignore the fact that most of your weight is still resting on him. “Of course you are. Why do I ever expect anything else?”

“You’ve got a history of using pailing as a distraction when you’re not okay so, yeah, I’m making sure.” He cups your cheek. You keep the gesture from becoming too tender by nipping his thumb. “You can barely stand. Go splay yourself across my concupiscent platform, I’ll be there in a sec.”

You nod. “KK.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re still okay, right?”

“I hate you,” he says affectionately, and points to his respiteblock. “Go.”

\---

You peel your flight suit off and then dip your fingers shallowly into your nook, because it’s not like anyone said you can’t fap. Your coordination is still off so you have to move slower than you want, thrusting shallowly in and out, avoiding accidental scratches. The buildup of genetic material from not getting laid isn’t anywhere near dangerous, but it is enough to cause discomfort, and it’s barely any time at all before your touch-starved bulges join the party.

You give up on putting on a show for Karkat and let your bulges meander their way into your nook as you peer over the side of the platform. There’s enough psionic coordination for you to pull out the bin of sex toys underneath, rooting through it, trying to decide what depraved endeavors won’t _technically_ invalidate Equius’ orders.

“You know, if you come, we can’t actually have sex.”

You groan and roll onto your back, resigned. “You read the med specs.”

“I am very diligent.”

“I’m not gonna die if I get off more than once.”

“On the one hand, I believe you. On the other hand, staying on Equius’ good side.”

Karkat flops down beside you. The jacket is gone, but the rest of his uniform remains, presumably because his other clothes are in here. You figured the too-tight pants would at least be an easy way to make him undress, but he is determinedly fighting distraction, because he’s an asshole and because he’s right about you breaking your edges on him. He’s not making you wait for the sake of teasing - he genuinely gives a fuck about hurting you, which is so infuriating that the pitch burns hotter. Can a guy not want to get the stuffing pailed out of him without having long conversations about feelings first? There are _reasons_ black and pale are separate.

“So - what, we gotta talk about all the ways we can get around him? We should do that in the group chat. I want to see how many touchpads we can make him crack before he has a full-blown aneurysm.”

Karkat does you the courtesy of tugging your bulges out of your nook and wrapping his fingers around them instead, thumb rubbing firm little circles. Apparently that’s vanilla enough to get away with, or he’s just more confident in his hand’s ability to keep you on edge than in your own.

“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” he says quietly.

You arch your hips. “Because you’re not creative enough to come up with anything on your own?”

“I’m plenty creative. You’ve got two thousand personalized messages of sweet, sweet creativity.”

“Only half of ‘em were hot. The other ones had me cringing really hard. Too many insults using nasty bodily fluids or cliches obviously ripped from your romance novels. Shit, haha, that’s what I missed - if I run them through a plagiarism checker, how many subconscious lines are gonna be ripped from - hhhahn, I’m trying to finish a thought here-”

Karkat, apparently uninvested in your sick burns, just nudges his finger deeper into your nook. “Stay on task.”

“You’re trying to get me to focus on my pailing feelings by… pailing me. Very subtle.”

“This isn’t pailing. This is a focus exercise.”

“I dunno, I’m pretty sure most people would say hand-on-partner-bulge counts as some form of pailing.”

“Not pailing how we do it.”

You prop yourself up on your elbows, triumphant. “That’s what I told Equius!”

He snickers and slings a leg over your thighs. “You’re still doing a really bad job of focusing.”

“No, I’m doing a really bad job of talking about feelings. There’s a difference.”

“I’m literally asking you to dirty talk.”

“See, your _mouth_ says you want dirty talk, but your _personality_ says you want a five page evaluation of how my kinks relate to my psychological well being.”

“ _Your_ personality says you’d give me a five page evaluation of your psyche to keep me from getting off just to annoy me. Your _actions_ say you don’t wanna do that because you have something to hide.”

“Sure, ‘cause whenever I talk about my feelings, something gets ruined.”

Karkat’s hand pauses. His finger draws out of you, and you groan, grabbing his wrist. “No,” you say, “see, this. Deep discussion of feelings leads to this. Major wiggly killing in the middle of sex.”

“Sollux.”

“If I’d wanted something red and sappy and emotionally cathartic, I would’ve gone to FF. Trust me, she’s got that shit covered. _Do me._ ”

“I need to make sure you aren’t using me.”

“Using you for _what?_ ”

“Fuck if I know. Feeling bad. Punishing yourself.” He rests his hand on your hip, and defensiveness claws its way up your throat. “Why do you want it rough?”

“KK. For the love of fuck.” You smear the hand that had previously been stroking your bulges over his cheek, leaving streaks of yellow. “I feel good. I don’t have my land legs yet, but I feel good. I’m not trying to get you to fuck the misery out of me. I want rough sex because it’s _fun_ , so if you could pin me down and let me call you sir without all the hand wringing I’ll be really fucking obliged. If you can’t trust me not to lie to you, even after all this time…”

“And you’re not just using this to try to shock your body into working?”

“Well, I’m using it as a physical therapy replacement. Does that count.”

“Nah.”

“So can we _please_ pail. I’m begging and everything, that should get you off.”

“I mean.” Karkat slips his hand back down your thigh, letting it creep between your legs. “I wouldn’t say no to you begging better.”

“Do better at making me need it, then.”

It’s a challenge and an insult in one, pitch as tar. Karkat’s hand stills again, and you’re thinking that if he willfully misinterprets something that obvious then you’re never gonna get your sex life back, but then his voice goes lower as he says, “Turn over.”

Ooh, yes. Okay. “On my side, or…”

“Your stomach, spongepan.”

“Got it, boss.”

“And don’t talk.”

“Oh, _now_ you want me shutting up.”

“Yeah. Don’t talk unless you need me to stop. Or you’re begging.”

You’re not gonna give him the satisfaction of begging. You will give him the satisfaction of being in charge, since that’s an easy dynamic to upkeep. Your pitch solicitations are rarely about fighting for dominance - he takes control and undoes you until you bite the sheets, and whoever loses control first loses the game. He’s not always in charge, but when you’re domming you tend to keep him in psionic restraints and get him off until he’s wailing, which is an easy game for both of you to win. You undo him, he gets a series of free orgasms. Nice.

You’re losing your focus again, but thinking about pinning Karkat to the couch and watching him gasp has the fun side effect of riling you up further. You roll onto your belly, craning your head over your shoulder to watch him, and he fists his free hand into your hair and presses your face into the platform. Two fingers press hard into your nook, spreading you apart, and you moan.

Karkat releases your hair, but the message is clear enough. You close your eyes and rock back against his hand, a little skittering of psionics crackling over his skin so you can keep track of where he is.

“No psionics,” he says, almost conversational about it. You hiss. “I don’t have dampeners, so you’ll have to do it manually. That’s not going to be too much for you, is it?”

Two minutes ago, a question like that would have been a serious boundary consideration. Now it’s all vicious challenge, daring you to prove you’ve got just as careful control over your powers as you did before you were a full-time helmsman. You know you do - Equius wouldn’t let you walk around without psionic dampeners if he thought you were in danger of randomly immolating someone - and Karkat knows you do, but it won’t hurt anything to prove it. You’ll just lose spatial awareness for a bit. Everything you see will be weirdly flat, and everything you don’t will just… not exist.

You pull your psionics back and turn your head to watch him. He presses your face back into the mattress. “I’m going to blindfold you,” he says, fingers sliding out of your nook.

Sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation definitely wasn’t on the list of things you’re not allowed to do. Hell yeah. You make a very appreciative noise in his direction, just so he knows you’re into it, and let him wrap a strip of black fabric around your eyes, tugging it down so you can’t peek out the bottom. It’s thick enough that the light doesn’t get through, and you have to force yourself not to reach out with your psionics.

You snake your arm under your body and not-so-subtly pull on your bulges, because you haven’t been forbidden to and you want to annoy him and you maybe want him to tie you up. A pair of handcuffs doesn’t count as heavy bondage, does it? But Karkat doesn’t even reward you with a disgruntled noise, just swats your hand away. You use your other hand. No one ever said you can’t be a pain in the ass when you’re subbing.

“Put your hands above your head. Cross your wrists.” A direct instruction you’ll obey, especially since it sounds like he’s going to bind you - fuck yeah - but once you’ve draped your arms over the end of the platform, he ignores them entirely. Instead his fingers press back inside you, punishing in their intensity, even while he takes all the care in the world with his claws.

“I was thinking about stringing you up, but not when you’ve barely gotten back on your feet,” he says, and all at once you understand what he’s doing, and with it comes a rush of heat so powerful that you have to fight not to come. His fingertips brush against a sensitive nerve cluster inside you and your muscles seize up, and if he does it again you won’t be able to hold back, and all you can think is _not yet, not yet, don’t end this early_.

He’s simulating the helm for you, at least to the point he can without the heavy duty equipment. You don’t have the ship to dissolve into or the subprocesses to pull your attention, but your sight is dimmed and your psionics are useless and you have his voice to focus on rather than the endless spiral of your own thoughts. He spammed your channel with all this fucking filth you never thought he’d really try, about getting his mouth around your bulges while you were jacked in, about seeing if you could keep your mind on the ship while you were getting fucked. (You might have sent Equius an official request to alter your rigging so you could rut on it. He may have refused.)

“You like pain,” Karkat murmurs, his lips pressed against your ear, his arm stretched so his fingers can continue their torturous movement inside you. You seize up again, and he must know how close you are to coming, because he stills them entirely. “I figured you might like this even more. Is this what you need, Sollux?”

You forget the challenge between you, forget the control you’re supposed to be pretending, forget that you’re gonna have to _talk_ about this later. Your hips rut helpless into his hand, and your voice is desperately broken when you say, “ _Please._ ”

“Because you still need to helm even outside the systems?” Karkat’s tongue traces the shell of your ear, and you can’t tell if you’re accidentally hurting him, and if you are you’ll deal with the fallout later. “That’s a real question, I want an answer.”

“Because it’s _you_ ,” you gasp. “Because it’s - I can - be _better_ for you, fuck, KK, it feels so fucking good, don’t stop.”

A few seconds pass without a response, and you worry that you’ve exceeded his invisible boundaries - it’s so hard to figure out what buttons you could accidentally push these nights. But at least you’re being honest now. You’d kill for him to keep you like this, keep your body as close to hooked in as it can get, keep your mind from drifting off. You’d kill for him to keep you present enough to do something _right_.

You’re about to start apologizing, even though you’re not sure what you need to apologize for, when Karkat says, “Oh.” There’s such a strange tenderness to it that you think he might’ve flipped over red as sunset, but then he adds, “You’re fucking infuriating.”

“I try.” You weren’t actually trying, but if it keeps the pitch flowing, more power to you.

“I’m going to make you fucking-” He doesn’t even bother finishing the thought. Instead he removes his hand from your nook, ignoring your whine of protest, and straddles you. You wait for the sound of a zipper, but instead of driving his bulge into you, he leans down and kisses your topmost spinal port.

Fef’s played with your ports before, but never Karkat. He avoids them like he used to avoid everything to do with your mechanical life, like if he doesn’t acknowledge them then he can pretend he’s not fucking a battery. Your spine stiffens and you uncross your wrists, gripping the frame of the platform in an attempt to ground yourself enough not to shock his mouth. He presses your face back down with his dry hand, holding your neck still, and kisses the port again, teeth scraping the edges of your skin.

“Is this what you need?” he asks again, back in his fucking dominant lowblood mindset, and you’re too far gone to do anything but whimper. “Answer me.”

The game doesn’t matter, the challenge doesn’t matter. Nothing has ever mattered less than pretending Karkat doesn’t get to you. Nothing has ever mattered more than making him continue, to lay you bare on this platform. His mouth as he kisses downward may as well be a knife carving out little pieces of yourself, and you’ve needed for so long, and you don’t know how to explain any of it because the words always fail.

“Answer me,” he repeats, sucking hard on a patch of skin just beside the metal. You keen.

“I know you’re still here, Helmsman,” he says, and it takes everything you have not to go to pieces.

“ _Please._ ”

“Please what?”

“It’s _good_ ,” you say, because you can give this up. Karkat Vantas is a lot of infuriating, pitch-tinged things, but he’s never been cruel.

He works his mouth all the way down your spine, leaving hickeys and little teeth scrapes as he goes, marking you. You will conscious thought back into your pan when he reaches your tailbone, because you’re reasonably sure you know where his tongue is gonna go next, and you’ve been cresting this edge for so fucking long. You won’t make it.

“Wait, waitwait,” you say.

He stops instantly, his hand still resting on your hip, a tether to the real world. “Too much?”

“I’m gonna come.”

“That’s kind of the idea, yeah.”

“No, I need - I need - I need you to fuck me properly.” You fight to wrestle your mind into coherent thought. “And I need a pail, and you - keep going. Until you finish.”

“Okay. Get on your knees,” Karkat says, and that’s enough to dissolve whatever scraps of thought you’d gathered together.

You hoist yourself up. He disappears for a moment, but then he’s back, thrusting the bucket between your spread legs. His arms wrap around your chest, holding you against him so you don’t have to strain, and he nips along your shoulder as his bulge finally sinks into your nook, and you go to pieces.

You white out so hard you think you might be having a psionic meltdown, except Karkat’s warm arm is a firm anchor around your torso while his hand works your bulges, your nook pulsing around him. The orgasm lasts a long time, which you know only because your pan’s good at measuring pleasure and this is on a scale you’ve never experienced and it just keeps going. You can’t escape. You don’t want to. The waves short you out so hard you can’t remember the date, the time, where you are, your own fucking _name_ \- you tether yourself to Karkat, trust him to carry you to shore, and let go.

\---

When you’re next consciously aware enough to process anything, you’re in an ablution trap, which is slowly filling with warm water. Also, your muscles are unhappy. You lean against the side of the tub and groan.

“Welcome back,” Karkat greets you.

You squint. Your pan’s definitely not working well enough to put together context clues. “How long have I been out?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

What. “What?”

“You came so hard you passed out. And then sort of lolled around being useless.” He hands you a water bottle. “Drink this.”

You squint harder. You can’t actually remember anything except white haze and the feeling of wanting to live in one moment forever, so you’re not sure how concerned you should be. When you reach for the bottle, you manage to grasp it and maneuver it to your mouth just fine, so… you’re probably okay.

“I worry you?” you ask, and take a swig. Then you take another, and another, and drain the bottle because holy shit you’re thirsty.

“Nah. For half a second I thought you’d had a heart attack, but then I realized I’m just really, _really_ good at sex.”

“Bite me.”

“We overdid it.” Karkat’s dragging himself out of domspace just as surely as you’re getting your synapses to fire, putting his personality back together. “Equius is going to kill us.”

“We _technically_ didn’t do anything forbidden.”

The corners of his mouth twitch. “And yet.”

“And yet,” you agree.

He dunks a washcloth into the water and starts working on the film of grease. Under ordinary circumstances, you’d complain that bathing you counts as red/pale dichotomy, but you’re still dazed enough that you probably need it. He can paste your pieces back together and grumble enough to make it black.

“You begged,” he says.

“Gave me something worth begging for.”

“And cried.”

“The fuck, I did not.”

“When you came. You definitely cried.”

You raise your hand to your cheek, startled to find dry tear tracks. Huh. Who the fuck cries during pitch sex? Apparently you made everything awkward first.

“This is bad,” you say.

“Is it?”

“This is… pale.”

“You sure?”

“There was nothing - remotely pitch about what we just did, fuck, shit, this is why I don’t talk about my feelings - your moirail has a _chainsaw_ -”

“Calm down.” Karkat has the audacity to pap you, brazen enough that your jaw snaps closed. “Everything is _fine_.”

“Your moirail has a chainsaw!”

“Kanaya is very understanding about vacillation. Especially when it comes to me, because I'm the goddamn Emperor of vacillation.”

“You’re _cheating_ on her.”

“No, I’m not. I’m going to tell her all about this when I see her later. In great detail.”

You groan. “I’m gonna die.”

“Do you really think I’d pile someone who’d kill my other quads - actually, don’t answer that.”

“I can’t believe this. All this time everyone thought I was gonna die of rough sex and I’m actually gonna die of quad vacillation.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m a hundred percent certain I’ll go back to pitch once you can actually walk?”

“Yeah, it’s not cheating if it’s temporary.”

“For fuck’s sake.” Karkat sets the cloth aside and pulls out his palmhusk.

“What are you doing?”

“Asking her if she’ll be upset if we do pale for like fifteen minutes.”

“I hate you. I hate you so much.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“My hate is as dark as a black hole and burns hot as the stars.”

“That’s a quote from one of my pitch novels, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

Karkat holds his palmhusk up in front of you. You peer at it until the blurs resolve into text.

GA: Tell Him If He Needs To Flip Pale To Sort His Feelings Then As Your Moirail I Wholly Support This Endeavor And Wish You Two Best Of Luck

“Happy now?”

“Talking about feelings _is_ pale.”

“You talk about feelings with Fef.”

“Red isn’t pitch!”

“You can’t talk about your feelings in the pitch quadrant?”

“Pitch isn’t _about_ feelings, it’s about pissing each other off.”

“Wrong.” Karkat boops your nose. God. He’s never more condescending than when he’s going off about quadrants. “Pitch is about understanding each other, and hating your partner for everything they could be and everything they’re doing wrong, and wanting to make them do better.”

“And great sex.”

He pauses, a strange expression crossing his face. “Do you hate me, Sollux?”

“What? Of course. I just got through quoting your trash novels at you.”

“What do you hate about me?”

“Oh, I get to make a list? Okay.” You close your eyes and shut off the faucet with your foot, sinking deeper into the now-full bath. “You’re too damn stubborn. You’re so damn stubborn and you spend all your time thinking instead of doing and you care too much and you never let anything go. You make a big deal out of every fucking little thing, if it’s not a tantrum then it’s a _talk_ , you want to talk and talk and label everything and categorize every interaction to a science, you…” You trail off, but he doesn’t interrupt, so you forge onward. “You care too much about _everything_ , if you can’t do anything about it you care, if you can do something about it you care and you meddle, you think you’re responsible for everything when you’re not and you give so many shits and I _hate_ it, I hate that you’re a good person, I hate that you’re better than I am.”

“Huh.” The strange expression returns, all the more bothersome because you can’t read it. You’ve got a program that could if you were hooked in, but you’re not, and your pan’s not known for doing what you want it to.

“What does ‘huh’ mean.”

“It means huh.”

“I swear to _fuck_ \- if I have to tell you what I’m thinking, it goes both ways.”

“What we just did - the helmsman thing. That’s the first time I’ve seen you really happy in… a long-ass time. Actual happiness, not just medicating your emotions with the systems.”

“I hope you’re not coming to the conclusion that we work better pale than pitch, because that is severely going to mess with our quad dynamics.”

“No. More like… huh. I don’t know.”

“I hate it when you tiptoe around it,” you say, staring at the end of the tub rather than looking at him. “Bad hate. It’s not pitch, it just hurts. This whole part of myself that’s so important to me and tonight - felt like the first time you’d ever fully accepted it, and - and. Fuck. If you tell me now it was just a roleplay that felt bad to you the whole time, I - fuck.”

“It didn’t feel bad,” he says. You flick a sidelong glance at him, watching him settle back on his heels. “You drive me fucking crazy, Sollux.”

“Because I’m a helmsman.”

“Because you would literally rather be a machine than figure out how to feel good in your body. And don’t tell me you can’t feel good. You just did.”

“It was an anomaly.”

“You drive me _fucking crazy._ ”

You hesitate for a moment. _Are you happy with me?_ The question rests on the tip of your tongue, and you’re too big a fucking coward to bring yourself to say it. Instead you close your eyes and ask, “What do you need?”

“What?”

“All this - this talk about what I want and what I need, what feels good for me, because I’m a self-absorbed son of a bitch and you care too much about everything - I never - I never ask. And I hate you. But I don’t want you to be miserable.”

Karkat swipes the rag over your ear, uncharacteristically quiet. The pause lasts long enough that you know his answer’s going to hurt. You’re not wrong.

“I need you to be a troll,” he says.

It’s a knife in your ribs. “I’m not-”

“I need you to be a troll,” he interrupts, “ _and_ a ship. I need you to take both. Maybe not in equal measure, I know the ship needs upkeep and you have trouble assimilating back into your pan, I don’t expect you to spend longer outside the systems than in them. But I can’t - what we did tonight didn’t feel bad, okay, I swear it didn’t feel bad. But I can’t deal with knowing that you’re only here out of obligation and you’re spending the whole time wanting to be somewhere else.”

You open your mouth. Close it. Open it again. “I want to be here.”

“For sex.”

“No, for _you_.” You reach out of the tub and take his hand, tracing the lines of his palm with your finger. “For this. For getting to touch you with my hands, for getting to be small enough that you take up all the room. You were - and the second you start fucking gloating, I’ll take it back - you were right about the semi-permanent rig. I would’ve missed this. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t hit full-blown regret, being a ship is fucking awesome, but I would’ve missed my hands.”

Karkat closes his hands around yours. “You drive me fucking crazy,” he says, softer.

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

“I need you to be a troll. I need you not to give up on this part of existing. Feferi will let you do whatever you want, whatever makes you feel okay, but I’m not here to enable you. I’m here to make your life harder. It’s in the job description.” He squeezes your fingers. “I need you to be a troll.”

“I can be a troll,” you say slowly, “if you accept that I’m also a helmsman.”

“I can accept that you’re a helmsman if you’re a troll too.”

You hum. “Okay," you say, jaw stretching with a yawn. You're gonna need one hell of a nap once you're out of the bath. "You’ve got a deal.”


End file.
